[aprssig] Another digi bites the dust

[Bruce W. Martin]

Yet another digi bites the dust due to change of ownership of a tower.

Several years ago AAA Towers in Athens, TN acquired quite a few of the  
Long Line tower sites that AT&T was decommissioning. I think part of  
their strategy was to recover the massive amounts of copper feed line  
used for these microwave sites as well as entice commercial customers  
to these sites. Most of the towers were self supporting and 250' or  
taller with commanding views. Unfortunately when they posted their  
list of available towers for rent, thieves took advantage of the list  
and started getting to the sites and stealing the copper. They were  
eventually caught and the tower list went offline. The company had  
very reasonable terms with local Amateur Radio operators to have full  
use of the facility for the price of keeping the property vegetation  
at bay. Then the owner died and the company started selling off many  
of these tower properties. DukeNet Communications (part of Duke Power)  
acquired the property and started insisting on more stringent  
requirements for year round monthly inspections, large amounts of  
liability insurance, and other onerous requirements for continued use  
by Amateur Radio operators.

Last year the KG4NRC-1 digi near Waynesboro, TN went off the air as  
DukeNet's new ownership made it impractical for Sean to continue using  
the site. Today I found out that I will need to take the NT4UX-4 digi  
near Crossville, TN off the air as the other Ham on the tower is also  
finding it too onerous to keep using the site. This will possibly  
affect some of the coverage of the I-40 corridor between Nashville and  
Knoxville.

The other NT4UX digis surrounding Nashville are not on any DukeNet  
owned property so I do not anticipate any problems with continued use  
of those sites.



-- 
Bruce W. Martin, KQ4TV
Trustee for NT4UX
Nashville Linux User Group - Amateur Radio- Special Interest Group
NLUG-AR-SIG